


Inside My Mind (Trying To Get Things Right)

by cxptained



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26124934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxptained/pseuds/cxptained
Summary: People always say they can feel anxiety creeping up their chest.Owen has no clue what they’re going on about. His anxiety has never creeped. It’s never crawled. It’s never moved slowly in its life.It’s taken him by the lungs before. It’s grasped them so tightly and so suddenly he thought they might burst. He’s choked on it as it shot down his throat and into the pit of his stomach like a foreign substance his body should reject.But never has it creeped.-----------Owen Harper has anxiety. No one causes that anxiety worse than his mother. Luckily, Jack Harkness is there.
Relationships: Jack Harkness & Owen Harper
Comments: 7
Kudos: 66
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Bingo Fest 2020





	Inside My Mind (Trying To Get Things Right)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! I don't know about you but I love Owen. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while now. So this is hitting the square disability for the Torchwood Bingo!

People always say they can feel anxiety creeping up their chest.

Owen has no clue what they’re going on about. His anxiety has never creeped. It’s never crawled. It’s never moved slowly in its life. 

It’s taken him by the lungs before. It’s grasped them so tightly and so suddenly he thought they might burst. He’s choked on it as it shot down his throat and into the pit of his stomach like a foreign substance his body should reject. 

But never has it creeped. 

**[text – Mum:] Ring me later.**

Owen is staring down at the screen. These three little words that practically blindside him.

Why does _she_ want to talk to him? Since when has she ever given a _shit_ about his life? She got rid of him. He left. He never looked back. 

And now he can feel it. That panic that turns from a simmer to a boil in three seconds flat. 

Owen’s breaths begin to shudder. They catch in his chest and he tries to cough them out but they get stuck in his throat even worse. So, he swallows hard. Swallowing more than just saliva; swallowing his fears. He tries to push them back down into the depths of himself, where he thinks they belong. But the thing about boiling is that it won’t be stopped unless you turn down the heat. 

His eyes close. He stumbles backwards blindly, knocking off a cold metal tray of freshly sanitised instruments from his examination table as he tries to find grasp on something to keep himself upright. It bangs loudly as it hits the ground. Owen spooks forward in the same moment.

It’s messy. He looks like Bambi on ice. 

Somehow his legs prevail as legs and he stays standing and while his heart hammers away against ribs, he gets a grip on himself. 

Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Repeat. 

He’s done this before, he can do this again. 

“Owen?” A welsh voice floats down and for a second that’s all he can process. More information filters through. Female. Concerned. Not in the same room as him.

Gwen. 

It’s Gwen. 

“Owen, everything okay? I heard a bang!” She calls from above, probably hasn’t moved from her desk. He hopes she hasn’t moved from her desk. He looks a right sight, gripping the medical cabinets like he might fall over, staring dead ahead, legs trembling, eyes squeezed shut like a kid who’s afraid of the dark. 

“Yeah.” Owen says, but it’s quiet. He coughs a little, clearing his throat and trying to rid himself of the tightness he feels in his airways. Swallowing hard, he nods for no one to see. “Yeah.” He says again, louder this time. More of a shout. 

“You drop something?” She asks. 

The doctor forces his eyes open, daring a glance to the railings that overlook the med-bay. There’s nobody there and he can’t help the short, relieved breath that escapes him. 

His heart still pounds a mile a minute, but he loosens his grip on the cabinet – it’s not holding him up any longer. His eyes close again, softer this time, and his forehead comes to rest against the edge of the shelf hard, metal shelf. 

“Yeah.” He answers.

“Do you want a hand clearing it up?” Gwen probes. Ever ready to help, that one. It’s sweet, Owen thinks, but exhausting.

“No.” Owen says. “No. I’ve got it.” He sounds defeated. 

The morning moves fast and slow all at once. The overwhelming sense of panic is gone, but in its wake it leaves that niggling sensation of dread for him to stew over. The seconds tick by, but the hours sprint.

Orders are spoken and he hears them, but he doesn’t give much of a response. A grunt of acknowledgement at most. He can hear them talking about him, but it doesn’t sink in. Tosh makes a comment to Jack. She’s worried. Owen tries to offer her a smile of reassurance but it’s thinly veiled and fake and he knows it’s obvious. 

Lunchtime arrives and Gwen shouts down that they’re going out to the pub. It’s common when they’re fed up chinese take out and pizza, they fancy maybe ingesting a vegetable every now and then. Owen should be over the moon but tells them he’s not feeling it today. It gets him even more concerned looks than he’s been receiving all morning but after a few minutes he hears the menagerie of their voices and footsteps leave the building. 

Owen lets out a sigh now he’s truly alone and fishes his mobile from his pocket. He stares at the text once again and thumbs the dial button numbly. It rings in his hand. A muted sound. 

**0:00**

**0:01**

**0:02**

“Hello?” A voice floats up. Owen’s still holding the phone in his hand, just watching the numbers tick up. 

**0:03**

**0:04**

**0:05**

“Hello?” The same voice. Owen hasn’t heard it in at least a year. “Owen?” 

He raises the phone to his ear. He closes his eyes. 

“Mum.” He says. “You wanted me to ring you?”

“Well, hello to you too. Is that how you answer the phone nowadays?” His mother responds, her tone slurs. Her voice is rough and scratchy. Years of too many cigarettes and too much wine. She’s drunk. Owen doesn’t mention it.

“You didn’t say hello when you texted. Didn’t know it was something we were doing now.” Owen chides, opening his eyes again and glancing around the medbay. He drags a hand down his face, blinking manically. “What do you need Mum?” He asks, urging for the real reason for this phone call. 

“I broke my leg.” She says, rather matter of factly. 

“You what?” Owen says, unable to keep the concern out of his voice. 

“Oh, you actually sound worried about me. That’s good. I broke my leg and I need you to come to London for a month or so to look after me.” She tells him. There is no evidence in her tone that it’s up for an argument. 

“I…I--” Owen splutters, his eyes blown wide at the very idea. “I _can’t_ . I have a job. I have a life. I can’t just come to _London_ for two months have you lost your mind?” He returns, his voice raising without him even realising. 

Not to mention, he thinks, she kicked him out eleven years ago. 

“Well, you’re a doctor. Come and doctor me. That’s your job. What’s the point of having a doctor for a son if he can’t do his job for his family?” His mother argues. “Family is supposed to help.”

Owen practically chokes on that statement. He can’t find the air to respond. 

“Owen?” She prompts again after seconds of silence. Silence where Owen’s can feel his internals raging without warning. He doesn’t understand quite how his mother can terrify him and anger him so greatly all in the same moment.

“Where’s this suddenly coming from?” He spits back, dark and low. He’s chosen bravery. He hasn’t realised but he’s moving now, pacing the floor of the medbay in angry circles. His free hand running nervously through his hair and sending dark strands in every direction. “Where was this ‘family’ mentality when I was sixteen?” Owen hates the fact that there are tears in his voice. Hates that they’re in his eyes. “When Dad died? When Katie died? Since when did you suddenly give a **_shit_ ** about family? About **_me_ **?!” He yells. 

He doesn’t mean to yell.

His heart rate is rising again and he can feel it in every vein beneath his skin. Bubbling and boiling.

“You will come to London, darling.” She says, in a sickeningly sweet tone. One she used when she apologised for shouting at him as a child. The one that means he’s supposed to believe she’s changed. She’s never changed and the name still makes his skin crawl. “Where I need you.”

“Don’t call me darli--”

“You will come!” His mum finally snaps. It’s shrill, sharp and sloppy in his ear. It makes his breath stop short and his blood still within him. The mother he knows. 

“I can’t!” He argues back, a broken record. “I won’t! I don’t…” Owen swallows and the fear sets back in. His bravado is lost. He’s young and helpless and he doesn’t want to be anywhere near that woman who damaged him.

“Friday evening. Tea will be on the table. I told the hospital you would come. They wouldn’t discharge me else. You _have_ to come. See you then.”

The line dies and all Owen is left with is the pounding in his ears. He lets the silence linger, ringing out around the Hub before he yells. 

It’s a scream from the heart. From his chest and from his soul. It’s guttural and heartbreaking and he’s glad there’s no-one here to listen to him break. 

Owen throws his phone, hard and straight down at the tiled floor of the medbay. He hears it crack. It bounces twice and lands face up, the screen shattered. It lights up feebly with a text from Gwen. 

**[ text - Gwen: ] I know you said you weren’t hungry. Picked you up pie and chips to go anyway. Thank me later. Or don’t. Grumpy sod.**

He shatters.

He squeezes his eyes tight and his mouth falls open. A sob squeezes out of his throat and he walks backwards til the soft, pale blue fabric of his shirt hits the cold wall behind him. The contact reverberates through his entire body and his legs give out beneath him as he slumps down to the floor. 

It’s a panic of a new kind now. Not the same as what gripped him by the lungs and left within minutes earlier that day. This panic winds and it twists and it encompasses every nerve, like his body is a forest to explore. He is his own panic, lost trying to navigate his body and it’s controls. 

Owen draws in his knees to his chest. He makes himself smaller against the wall, a habit since he was a child. 

_‘You’re a waste of space.’_ His mother would spit, stinking of alcohol. She hated him since his father died. He looked exactly like him. She saw her lost love in his eyes, in his features. She hated him for existing. He was just a child. 

He never cried then. Just buried his head within his legs and made himself into as tiny of a ball as he could manage. 

He cries now. 

He rocks.

He sobs.

His shouts.

There is no way out of his own head. He cannot hear the outside world. Couldn’t make contact if he tried. He’s a child again, wandering the winding paths in a forest of his own anxiety. He runs, but it never ends. If he looks up, the trees close out the bright blue sky. 

Anxiety is not new to Owen Harper. But every time it takes it’s grip he feels like it’s the very first time. 

He can’t breathe. He can’t move. His legs feel paralysed and his hands grasp pathetically at the ground.

And then suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder. It’s large and warm and his head shoots up but he doesn’t see a thing. His vision is blurry, his eyes are blinded by his own mind. He squeezes them tight shut, swallows hard like he’s trying and dammit he’s _always_ trying. But he still doesn’t see. 

The hand is part of a pair. They take him firmly. They pull him in. Owen’s face buries into a chest.

“J-..ack…?” Owen chokes. It’s the cologne that does it. He doesn’t know what Jack wears, but it’s unique. He’s never smelt it on anyone else.

“I’ve got you.” Jack says. And Owen is compelled to believe him.

He still can’t breathe, and air is coming thick and fast but doing incredibly little in the long run. 

Jack’s arms come down tight around him. He’s being hugged. Practically crushed by the pressure but it feels… perfect. It helps. If the doctor part of his brain was in any way alive in the moment, he’d tell himself that it was a grounding technique. That it’s one that works unbelievably well on him. That he was an idiot for always being too proud to ask for it when he needed it. 

All at once the world goes quiet. That forest opens up, he can see a clearing at the end. It’s a long path to get there, but it’s doable. 

“It’s okay, Owen.” Jack’s voice comes low and assured. He can hear it rumble through his chest before the words touch the air. 

There’s a hand in his hair. It adds volume to the already tangled strands, fingers dragging across his scalp in a surprisingly soothing way. 

“I don’--t… want to go…-” Owen speaks through sobs, voice muffled by Jack’s dark blue shirt. But that’s good. If he can talk, he can breathe. Breathing is good. A few minutes ago he wasn’t sure he’d ever breathe again so this is… good. 

“You don’t have to.” Jack promises him. He has no clue what Owen is going on about, but he promises anyway. 

A kiss is pressed to the side of Owen’s head. In his right mind he’d pull away, look at Jack with disdain. Today it simply pulls another sob from him. His shoulders shaking violently. 

“Jack… I can’t…-- Please.” He’s practically begging and later he’s going to feel like a right tosser for all of this, but right now it spills out of him. 

His head is moved. One arm stays tight around his body, the constant pressure that he needs. The other hand cups his cheek with a surprisingly soft palm. Jack’s face is inches from his own. 

His eyes are blue. Very blue. Have they always been this blue? That is an _unfair_ shade of blue. Lucky Ianto Jones. 

“You don’t have to do anything, Owen Harper. You don’t have to go anywhere at all.” Jack tells him, those unfairly blue eyes searching out his brown ones. Owen blinks. He swallows. “Nowhere, you understand? The only person that gives you orders in this life, is me. And I don’t remember telling you to go anywhere.” He says, and Owen thinks that’s an attempt at humour at the end there. 

He doesn’t even realise his sobs have stopped. 

Jack pulls him back into his chest after that, and Owen has no clue how long they stay there. He spends the time focusing on Jack’s heartbeat. He counts each thud. He listens to Jack’s lungs. Listens to how Jack’s body works to simply keep him alive like every human’s does. 

His breaths slowly still and his shoulders stop shaking. The tears stop coming and he can think straight once more. 

Owen finally pulls away. Jack reluctantly lets him.

“Sorry.” Owen says, a little awkwardly.

He’s sitting on the floor of a medbay, half in his bosses lap, after a panic attack that occurred because his emotionally abusive wreck of a mother just tried to guilt trip him into living with her for two months after kicking him out eleven years ago. 

He has to give it dues, he didn’t expect that when he woke up this morning. 

Jack simply shakes his head with a smile. 

“Don’t be.” He replies, watching him carefully. “Are you okay?” He asks. 

Owen nods. Jack raises his eyebrow. Owen raises one back. A flurry of communication through silent gestures. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jack asks instead. Owen shakes his head this time.

“No.” He answers, taking a shuddery breath. His eyes flick to the floor. 

Jack wants to press but he won’t. He knows better than that. So they fall into a silence but, surprisingly, it’s not awkward. 

After a minute or so Jack gets to his feet. 

“Why were you here?” Owen asks quickly. Jack offers him a hand and he pulls his body up to standing. It’s surprisingly difficult to get his footing again but he manages it after a second or two. 

“I have a sixth sense.” Jack says, tapping the side of his nose as he turns his back on Owen.

The cog door rolls open, the alarm blaring to signify the return of his colleagues, and Owen is left staring in confusion at the back of his - possibly physic - boss’s head. 

  
  



End file.
